


The Lucky One

by fireflyslove



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Avengers: Endgame fix it, M/M, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Returning from the Dead, Time travel abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 16:03:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18641434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireflyslove/pseuds/fireflyslove
Summary: Steve brings the Infinity Stones back, and makes a couple of pit stops on the way back to his own time.Or, I fix That Scene





	The Lucky One

**Author's Note:**

> Eyyyy how many Endgame fix its would a fix it fix if a fic could fix?
> 
> At least three.
> 
> If you can spot the Tumblr posts that inspired this, you get a cookie.

Something in Bucky’s face makes Steve pause, but there’s not enough time to parse it before he’s gone, shoved into the quantum realm. He realized too late that Bucky’s impression from their conversation was that Steve intended to stay in the past. He didn’t, of course, at least not for very long. There was one thing he very much wanted to do, but that would have to be last. 

He returned the Power Stone first, to the planet Morag. This was where and when the Thanos they had just defeated had come from. Steve still wasn’t entirely certain how killing him in 2023 didn’t obliterate the intervening nine years, but thinking about time travel mechanics too much hurt his brain, so he just dropped the Stone off in its temple for Quill to find, and jumped back into the Quantum Realm. 

The Aether was a bit more complicated, he had to not only steal his way through Asgard unnoticed (and wasn’t THAT a trip, seeing the now-shattered city that Thor had described once upon a time in shining detail) but also reinsert it into Jane Foster. It took longer than he would like, and he spent half a day shoved into a linen cupboard before he could get close enough to her while she was sleeping. At the same time, he left Mjolnir in a shrub, hoping that the Thor of this time would try to call it and not try to find it. It pained him more than a little to leave it behind, considering what it had meant, but it was something that had to be done.

Returning the Time Stone was by far the easiest of them. He materialized on the roof of the Sanctum to find the Ancient One (who he had, from Bruce’s brief recount of their conversation, expected to be an ancient Tibetan person, not a bald white woman) with her back turned to him. She rounded as soon as he finished forming, and held out a hand expectantly. He proffered the Stone, and she took it, returning it to the pendant. “You have miles to go before you sleep,” she said cryptically. “Safe journey.”

He emerged nearly on top of his own prone form to replace the Mind Stone. His past self’s eyes were blinking blearily as he reinserted the stone. He hesitated, his hand over the mechanism to reenter the quantum realm. Ah, fuck it, this was already an alternate timeline from his anyway. He definitely had not fought himself in 2012. 

“I’m from the future,” he said casually.

“You’re what now?” his past self said.

“I’m from 2023. But that’s not what matters,” he said.

“You said Bucky was alive,” his past self said.

“He is. He’s been Hydra’s captive for the last 70 years. Hydra is in SHIELD, deep,” he said. “I don’t have a lot of time to explain, but…” he detailed what had happened in 2014 as briefly as he could.

“How do I know this isn’t still some trick of Loki’s?” his past self asked.

“You don’t,” Steve said. “But you can do whatever you want with this information.”

“Thank you,” his past self said. “I think.”

And with that, Steve went further back. He shot back to 1970, and a SHIELD bunker. He saw Howard and Tony’s retreating forms and shoved the Stone into the vault, where it reformed the cube form he had first seen it as. The blue glow of the Tesseract quickly disappeared behind a hasty and sloppy welding job. He was physically in this time not just twice, but three times, and it gave him the heebie jeebies. 

There was only one Stone left, but he had bypassed its time on his way back here, and it seemed only logical to continue into the past before he returned it. It would give him a reason to leave if he had any temptation to stay. He didn’t think the temptation would be there, but considering that he hadn’t actually spoken to Peggy in any lucid state in well over a decade (or several decades of actual time, but he had been unconscious for most of that) and he was  _ still _ a little bit in love with her, he was taking the Soul Stone with him.

He materialized in a dark alley in New York City in 1945 and took a deep steadying breath before he made the suit disappear to reveal clothes that wouldn’t be out of place on the street here. Steve stepped out onto the sidewalk and made for the bar he knew Peggy was waiting at. It was, perhaps, not the best idea he had ever had, showing up when he was told to, but it had bothered him for a very long time that he couldn’t keep this date.

She was sitting at the bar, her hair perfectly coiffed, and that  _ red dress _ how had he forgotten  _ that? _ He felt like he should’ve brought flowers, but it was too late now. She turned at some noise, and he saw the confusion and then hope flit over her face and  _ here  _ was that temptation he had been afraid of. 

But… no. Somewhere, even as he stood here, watching Peggy’s astonished face cross the floor to meet him, somewhere Bucky was being tortured and brainwashed. He would tell Peggy everything he knew and then return to his own time. Another timeline here, where Peggy could find him in the Arctic, save Bucky from decades of torture, and prevent Hydra from infiltrating SHIELD from the outset. 

“Steve?” she asked, almost a whisper. 

“Hi, Peg,” he said.

“How… how is this possible?” she asked, pressing a hand to his chest. “You put the plane in the water.”

“I did,” Steve said. “I’ll tell you everything, but we have to go somewhere more private.”

“Of course,” Peggy said.

In less than ten minutes, they were in Peggy’s hotel room, and she was pouring a drink.

“You’re from the future,” she repeated.

“About eighty years,” Steve said.

“And you’ve come back somehow… why?” Peggy asked.

“To see you,” Steve said. “I’ve already created a half dozen alternate timelines.”

“We never find you, do we?”

“Not until 2012,” Steve said. “Which is exactly why I’m here. I didn’t have a chance to be happy with you, but I’ll be damned if I can’t make at least one of me.”

“You could stay,” Peggy started to say, but interrupted herself before the sentence was even finished. “No, of course you couldn’t. You have a life there, friends and family, I’m sure.”

“Exactly,” Steve said with a sad smile.

“Tell me, are you at least happy? Did you ever find someone?” Peggy asked.

“I did,” Steve said. 

“I’m happy for you,” Peggy said. Steve can hear the pain in her voice, and it breaks his heart, but she still has a chance, and so does the version of him that’s frozen in the ice at this instant.

They sat and drank while Steve told her… well, everything. There was no reason to keep it a secret, and anything he could think of might be useful.

“I knew Zola wasn’t reliable,” she said at last. “That’s… a lot to take in.”

Steve tossed back the rest of his drink. “That’s not quite all of it.”

“Oh?” 

“Bucky didn’t die when he fell from the train,” Steve said. “Hydra has him and they’re turning him into a brainwashed assassin as we speak.”

“Oh,  _ Steve, _ ” Peggy said, leaning forward and taking his hands in hers. “I’m so sorry.”

Steve looked up at her through his lashes. “I can’t stay here, but I need you to save him. For him and for the me that’s here now.”

“Of course,” Peggy said. “I can’t leave anyone in the clutches of Hydra, and certainly not Sergeant Barnes.”

“Thank you,” Steve said. He looked over at the clock on the wall. He had been here for almost six hours, and though time really didn’t have any meaning when he was travelling through it, the less he spent messing with timelines, he felt, the less there would be different about the one he was spinning off now.

“You have to go back, don’t you?” Peggy asked. 

“I do. But first… can I get that dance?” Steve asked. 

“Of course,” Peggy said. 

Steve’s learned to dance in the last decade, mostly by thinking of it as a fight, and now, even with no music, he finally put it into practice. She was just the right height, and Steve was deeply regretting his life choices as he buried his nose in her hair and tears rolled down his face. 

“You learned to dance,” she said.

“I’ve had some time,” Steve said. “Get used to this body and all.”

Suddenly, she was pulling away and wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. “You need to go,” Peggy said. “Before I beg you to stay.”

“I don’t know if I could say no to that,” Steve said.

“And I don’t want you to stay. You have a life and a love to return to,” Peggy said. “Go and make her as happy as the you who’s here is going to make me.”

“Him,” Steve corrected automatically.

“I’m sorry?” 

“Ah, him. It’s him, not her,” Steve said. He hadn’t meant to say that.

“Oh,” Peggy said. “Interesting. Then go, Steve. Go be with him and keep him safe and happy.”

Steve smiled, a wide, genuine thing. “I’d give a lot to see the two of you in a room together when he isn’t trying badly to flirt with you because he’s insanely jealous.”

“Barnes?” Peggy asked. “Oh! Well, that certainly explains some things.”

“I’ve loved you both for a long time,” Steve said. “Hopefully all of you in this time can work that out to something.”

“I look forward to it,” Peggy said. “Now go!”

He kissed her forehead one last time, gave her hand a squeeze, and hit the button to take him to Vormir.

He materialized at the bottom of a mountain path. The Soul Stone glowed firebrand hot in his pocket as he began to climb.

About halfway up, a shadowy cloaked figure appeared out of the murk. 

“Steven, son of Sarah,” it said. The voice was familiar, but Steve couldn’t place it. “You have come to claim the Soul Stone?”

“No, actually,” Steve said. “I’ve come to return it.”

The form floats into the light, and Steve gets a sick jolt at the face. The Red Skull looks back at him.

“You possess the Soul Stone, and yet you do not wish to use it?” Red Skull asked.

“How did  _ you _ get here?” Steve bit off.

“After my unfortunate demise at your hands by the Space Stone, my soul was sent here to guard the Soul Stone. You might call it a form of Purgatory,” Red Skull said. 

“I suppose there’s no killing you this time,” Steve said. 

Red Skull laughed, the sound far away and hollow. “No, no you cannot.”

“A shame.”

“Perhaps.” A moment of silence stretched long between them, then, “Do you know the price that is extracted to receive the Soul Stone?”

“A life,” Steve said, trying not to picture Natasha lying dead at the bottom of a cliff.

“Indeed,” Red Skull said. “And in return for the Soul Stone, a life can be given back.”

“What?” Steve said, looking up into the hollow spaces where the eyes should be.

“You give the Stone back without losing it, and you are granted a boon. One whom you love who has died will be resurrected, and live out the rest of their natural life. You need only speak their name.”

Steve doesn’t even hesitate. “Natasha.” 

And then, somehow, he found himself lying in a pond under the strange sky of Vormir, the star in constant eclipse. The water has soaked him to the skin, and he sat up, pushing his hair out of his face.

A splash to his left made his head snap around, and there she was. She was just as sodden and confused as he, looking around herself.

“Steve?” she asked. “What the hell?” 

“We won,” Steve said. “And the Soul Stone granted me a boon.”

“You’re sure this isn’t the afterlife?” 

“Do you actually believe in the afterlife?”

“No, but that doesn’t really matter.”

“It’s not,” Steve said.

“We can go back?” Nat asked.

Steve gave her the time and space coordinates for the quantum tunnel, and they hit their buttons at the same moment, shooting into the quantum realm for the last time. 

It seemed like both an instant and an eternity that stretched like elastic until it was suddenly over, and Steve was standing on the platform, Natasha next to him. They were dry now, no evidence that they had ever been wet. Bruce was looking at them, his jaw agape.

“He said you weren’t coming back,” Bruce said.

Steve remembered the look on Bucky’s face as he had left, and he looked around for Bucky.

“He took off that way,” Bruce said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “Also, did you know you brought Nat back with you?” 

“Thanks for noticing,” she said. “Who’s that?” 

Steve looked over to where she was indicating, and found Sam standing next to a bench, holding Steve’s shield, whole. Steve knew that he had not repaired the shield, it was next to his bed, still shattered. On the bench next to Sam, facing away from them was an old man.

“That’s you,” Bruce said. “But old. Bucky thought it was you.”

“It is me, but not your me,” Steve said. He had an idea of who this was, although how Peggy’s Steve could get here was a mystery to him. 

“I’m not even going to try to understand that one,” Bruce said.

As much as Steve wanted to go chase Bucky, he didn’t know how long the older version of him would be there, so he went over to the bench first.

“You’re giving people the wrong impression,” he said. 

Sam looked up, shock registering on his face.

The old Steve cackled. “I was looking forward to this. I’m sorry about Bucky.”

“He’ll get over it,” Steve said dismissively. “Did it work?” 

“She found me only a few days later, and Bucky a few months after that,” old Steve said. “I won’t bore you with the details, but we were all happy.” 

“Good,” Steve said. He looked out over the water, and then opened his mouth to say something, but when he turned back, the old man was gone, and he and Sam were left standing alone. Sam was still holding the shield.

“We’re gonna talk about this, right?” Sam asked.

“We are,” Steve said. “But right now…” 

“Go get him!” Sam said, making flapping motions with his hands. 

Steve knew when to take a hint, and he turned, running in the direction Bruce had indicated. Bucky wasn’t trying to hide his trail, and it was child’s play for Steve to find him. He was reducing a tree to kindling, and if Steve heard right, sobbing at the same time.

At the sound of his footfalls, Bucky rounded on him, mouth open to shout at anyone who came to interrupt his rage.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve said. “I’m here.”

“You came back,” Bucky said.

“Of course I did,” Steve said. 

“I thought you were going to stay in the past, with Peggy.”

“I was tempted, but that wouldn’t’ve been fair to any of us,” Steve said. “She deserved her own life, and I have one here. Buck, I’ve done a lot of stupid things because of you, and it isn’t going to stop anytime soon.”

Bucky seized Steve’s face in both hands and brought their mouths together in a bruising kiss.

“Love you, punk,” he said.

“Love you, jerk.”

“Don’t ever do anything like that again,” Bucky said.

“About that,” Steve said. “The old man me gave Sam the shield. I think he was right, it might be time for me to hang it up.”

“You’re serious?” Bucky asked.

“After all this? Yeah.”

“You’re going to be insufferable inside a week,” Bucky said, but a wide grin cracked across his face.

“Oh, probably,” Steve said. “But hey, you’ll come up with some way to distract me.”

“I’m sure I will,” Bucky said.

And they lived happily ever after.

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found anywhere the fics fix @fireflyslove (and at the time of posting on the Tumbls @capsbum)


End file.
